The Organic brew; London, pakistan, photography, travel, poetry & a general acerbic sentiment.

Like That Only » The Reluctant Novelist

// February 24th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Articles

I still havent read Mohsin Hamid. I suppose I should…

The novel traces the life of Changez, a young Pakistani man who falls in love with, gets disillusioned by, and eventually abandons America. Changez tells his story in first person to a nervous American stranger, over the course of a long dinner in Lahore’s Anarkali market.

Hamid’s storytelling, as always, is top class. The monologue format works for him the same way the handheld camera works for Oliver Stone in Platoon – it gives a personal, point-of-view feel to the narrative, and at the same time makes it edgy and unstable. Since Hamid did not give a voice to the other party in the conversation, the reader fills in the gaps with his own imagination. At least for me, this worked beautifully — this mystery enhanced the ominous atmosphere of the overall story.

via Like That Only » Blog Archive » The Reluctant Novelist.

New Karachi literary festival hopes to turn page on pak lit

// February 20th, 2010 // No Comments » // Articles, Reading(s)

News of the festival comes at a time of mounting interest in Pakistani literature. The trend was perhaps sparked by the publication in 2007 of Hamids novella, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. That was followed by Hanifs dark A Case of Exploding Mangoes and a collection of short stories, In Other Rooms, Other Worlds, by Daniyal Mueenuddin. A copy of the latter was given to the US President, Barack Obama, by his regional envoy Richard Holbrooke, who said of the collection of interwoven stories: “Its beautiful.” Meanwhile, Kamila Shamsie, whose fifth novel, Burnt Shadows, was published last year, has also received international acclaim.

via New Karachi literary festival hopes to turn page on bombs - Asia, World – The Independent.

Sadaat Hasan Manto: A Profile

// January 19th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Articles

“Saadat Hasan will die one day,

But ‘Manto’ will never die”.

via Sadaat Hasan Manto: A Profile compiled by Aparna Chatterjee.

Read Toba Tek Singh (one of Manto’s more famous short stories)

FT.com / Columnists / Lunch with the FT – Lunch with the FT: Michael O’Leary

// December 20th, 2009 // No Comments » // Articles

In the middle of this year Ryanair had the highest market value of any airline in the world, after Singapore Airlines.

So you mean, it had the second highest market cap in the world? perhaps?

Lunch with the FT, usually entertaining, particularly when the interviewer gets starry eyed..

via FT.com / Columnists / Lunch with the FT – Lunch with the FT: Michael O’Leary.

Of Bombay dreams: The Sialkot cowboy who couldn’t ride into a Bollywood sunset

// September 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Articles

This was published nearly four years ago – sadly the images which accompanied it (and who’s melancholy had made me save the page are long lost). But here is the article, reproduced here for posterity.

The Sialkot cowboy who couldn’t ride into a Bollywood sunset
Akhtar Mirza

The picture that you see on this page is not of a Hollywood cowboy but that of a unique character, my Kashmiri Mohalla (Sialkot) neighbour, Chaudhri Abdul Hameed Butt. All the years he spent in Sialkot, he did so because he couldn’t do otherwise, but he would escape whenever he could. It was to Bombay that he always went. The first time he did this was in 1946, when he had finished college. He returned in 1947 after some hard knocks, but in 1958 he set out again, this time for good. All he wanted was to become an actor. This was not to be, so he passed time working as an accountant for a Bombay banana merchant. Every family has an actor � it is only a difference of degrees � and Hameed Butt had a rare comic talent. He once played Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and he was good. He could imitate several famous actors of the Indian industry. It is ironic that he could not become an actor. Not that he did not try and try hard; it is just one of those things � he could not get a break.

From 1947 to 1958, he worked as a clerk in the Ordnance Clothing Factory in the Sialkot Cantonment. He saved money for years, and when he thought he had enough, he got himself a passport and set out for Bombay. He was a marvelous googly bowler and a hard-hitting batsman who believed in fours and sixes rather than singles, which was why he never stayed too long at the wicket. While at the crease, he would sometimes start walking like Charlie Chaplin down the wicket and then run back. He would have the batsman at the other end in fits, while simultaneously trying to save the wicket. Once after hitting a ball, he ran in circles around the three wickets at his end instead of running towards the bowler’s end.

He was also fond of bodybuilding. His room � he was our neighbour � was on the top storey and that is where he lived, winter and summer. Whenever I went up to the third storey of our house to photograph clouds, I would see Hameed on his rooftop. He would strike body building poses and shout, “Come on, my boy, take my picture.” There were hardly any telephoto lenses in those days and a 50 mm lens was quite useless from such a distance. However, in my own home, I photographed him many times.

When he had left for Bombay in 1958, his friends in Sialkot used to hope that one day they would read his name on the poster of a big movie and everyone would be happy that Hameed had finally achieved what he had always wanted. But this never came to pass and after some time, word went round that Hameed had not been able to make it. In 1964, when I travelled to Bombay, I asked my brother if he knew anything about Hameed. He told me that until three years ago, he used to drop in regularly but had suddenly stopped coming. My brother did not know where Hameed lived. I was disappointed because I really wanted to meet him. My brother said that he could have got Hameed some role in the movies through one of his friends, but the man had simply disappeared.

In a city the size of Bombay, it is only by a miracle that you will run into someone you seek. One day as I stood on the footpath facing Crawford Market, I caught sight of Hameed at some distance on the crowded footpath and I began to run, pushing people out of my way. Finally, I managed to catch up with him and placed my hand on his shoulder. He turned and stared at me. He did not smile, and looked petrified instead. I shook him by the arm and said, “Hameed, what is wrong? Recognise me, I am Akhtar.” Then he threw his arms around me and we stood their embracing each other as though it was Eid.
(more…)

Dawn Editorial: Bank interest is not �riba�

// June 26th, 2009 // No Comments » // Articles

This is a very important point, �and its good to see Dawn weighing in here. Many of the most exacting (and arguably detrimental) �injunctions are generally potrayed as being cut and dried. Music, interest and so on.

On a purely logical point, the nature of ‘interest’ has changed dramatically. From usury that implied severe (often physical) trauma to modern interest and bankrupcy laws and debtor protection regulations that safeguard those in financial distress. This, to my mind means that equating the two is pretty disingenious.

And this also raises the point of whether companies, as merely legalistic entities (and thus, not facing any distress from default) really do need to abide by the same conditions at all?

PS. I havent read these as yet in any detail, but it seems the article cited in the editorial is this one, and a further google books result here.

The controversy about the permissibility or prohibition of bank interest started in the colonial times, in the 19-century onwards, when banking institutions came to the Islamic world.�

The controversy first raged in Egypt. It is said that the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Muhammad Abduh, had permitted interest on postal savings though the fatwa issued by him is not available now. Today, many still ask if bank interest is prohibited in Islam. Most of the jurists maintain that it is not permissible, and Muslims should not accept interest on their bank deposits.�

In the latter part of the 20-century many Muslim intellectuals came out with the concept of Islamic banking based on mudaraba and profit-sharing. A number of Islamic banks were started in Muslim and non-Muslim countries with a large Muslim population. Still the question continues to be asked if banking interest is permissible, and there is no unanimity of opinion on this question.

Yet, there are many Islamic scholars who feel that banking interest is not prohibited by Islam. Many modern commentators of the Quran also translate riba as usury and not as simple banking interest. From Pakistan Prof Fazlur Rehman, who had migrated to the US and taught at Chicago University for a number of years, wrote a very well-argued paper on the permissibility or otherwise of banking interest. He came to the conclusion that banking interest is not prohibited. Even those who do not agree with this view must read his article. It is very scholarly and based on original sources.

What is riba then? The Quran strongly condemns the institution of riba. It says, �Those who swallow usury (riba) cannot arise except as one whom the devil prostrates by (his) touch. That is because, they say, trading is only like usury. And Allah has allowed trading and forbidden usury. To whomsoever then the admonition has come from his Lord, and he desists, he shall have what has already passed. And his affair is in the hands of Allah. And whoever returns (to it) � those are the companions of Fire: there they will abide.� (2:275)

(more…)

The madonna and the mevlana

// November 6th, 2005 // No Comments » // Articles, Poetry

The popularity in the US of Rumi, a 13th-century Turkish poet, is a tragic irony, as the order of Sufi dervishes he founded is banned at home, writes William Dalrymple (Guardian)
[photograph: http://www.korfez.net/mevlana]

The essence of what Dalrymple writes is perhaps best surmised in this photograph of rumi’s mystism turned into a circus act:

On threads unsaid and the great desi self delusion

// November 5th, 2005 // No Comments » // All, Articles

Talk turned today to my impressions of that ghastly film �bride and prejudice� (on which I wrote a particularly vitriolic write up as I foamed at the mouth having wasted a hard earned 5 quid on the film) this was just one of coincidences that happens, unconnected I am sure to the fact that The Friday Times published a rather late film review, which to my considerable disgust manages to explain away the films monstrous failings under the guise of something about �Bollywood being Bollywood�.
I am also currently reading Salman Rushdie�s �midnight�s children� which after many misses with the likes of Kamila Shamise is one of the few books by a desi author I find inspiring. I need not add that the book, or atleast what I�ve read of it is a tour de force of inspired, and deeply imaginative writing.
My excitement for a newly discovered desi writer I admire is tempered by today�s reading of the stinging review of Shalimar the Clown (Rushdie�s latest book) in the New York Times book review; it seems Rushdie may have lost the touch, �lazily� crafting single faceted characters cast in premature plots. Shame, for as far as Midnight�s children goes, the writing is nothing if not captivatingly brilliant.

These many diverse threads seems to flow into a seemingly irrelevant article by William Dalrymple, titled unenlightening �the lost sub-continent (Observer, August 13, 2005)� as I read through it, funny how I realize it to be a confluence of ideas I so sure I�ve almost toyed with sub-consciously over the last couple of days.

Take Kamila Shamsie, a rather pedestrial author if you ask me (who, for the purposes of this post stands in for all the myriad similar clones celebrated as ‘writers’) and yet, she and others of her elk are celebrated as writes � even while they piggybacking either the �chutnification� phenomenon (to borrow Rushdie�s expression) or indeed our hunger to immerse ourselves in stories from home. My invective is put more elegantly in the article itself:

writer and critic Pankaj Mishra has attacked what he called the “slickly exilic version of India”, manufactured by a “cosmopolitan Third World elite … suffused with nostalgia, interwoven with myth, and often weighed down with a kind of intellectual simplicity foreign readers are rarely equipped to notice”.

So why bride and prejudice then?
The movie is more than just a badly written, anemically plotted absurdity, it is a manifestation of this very sort of scrubbed, romantic flights of fancy that come about from skewed perceptions of what living in the sub-continent is really about. Cloying visions of India/Pakistan are all very well, but when we start believing them to be true or even worse, dumb down artistic expression to worthless baubelized trinkets, Mishra�s indictment for intellectual simplicity seems to hit home. There is no other explanation for why preposterously bad literature, such as that penned by Shamsie should succeed.

Turning to a thread touched upon in the article, I cant help but wonder how we so can readily accept English writing by homegrown authors (who, as we find flee the coop as soon as possible) as our �own� ironically, since most of this is written with an eye to the west at any rate. I think its one of those everyday exceptional things that you kind of never realize is rather unusual. It would be hard to imagine, for example this kind of sentiment in any other part of the world for literature that is written in a language and cultural context so at odds to its own.

But then this post-colonial stake that the sub-continent retains in the English language means English is considered as much a local language as Urdu or Hindi. For the educated middle class that generally begets these authors, perhaps even more so. When these authors work dal recipies into books with a mind to boost sales in sub-urban waterstones, the castigation as a sell out, de-ethnicised desi now seems understandable in context. And herein i think lies the explanation of why they are treated so different from Hemmingway. Where they share a language, the two milieus are also diametrically apposed; it�s in many ways a mutually exclusive constraint that writers from other English speaking countries such as Australia don�t have to face.

On the whole the article Dalrymple is arresting if meandering; he brings a perspective few other �firgangi� authors can match, immersed as he is in the ways of the sub-continent; his mention in passing to Dehli ki Akhri Shama, just the sort random aside he can draw upon to make his writing so much more interesting.

The footnote mentions �white mughals� Dalrymple�s latest book is to be brought to the stage. Many were unable to push through the book (admittedly it made for some rather heavy going every now and then) hopefully theatre will make the fascinating story he narrates more widely heard. In the current din of clash of civilizations, it would be illuminating to hear an account of people who agreed that at the end of the day, we are more similar that dissimilar.

Pakistan’s first national anthem

// June 20th, 2005 // 2 Comments » // Articles

�Aey sarzameen-e-Pak zarrey terey hein aaj sitaron sey tabnak. Roshan hey kehkashan sey kahin aaj teri khak.�
O land of Pakistan, each particle of yours is being illuminated by stars. Even your dust has been brightened like a rainbow.�

It seems the current national anthem (penned by Hafeez Jullundhri) wasnt the original one. Funny this is the first time i am hearing about it – considering how we were made to study (compulsory) ‘Pakistan studies’ in school, where wranglings over the national anthem was a subject given some importance. An intriguing editorial and article in the Daily Times explains more..

Given the recent controversy in India regarding Mr Jinnah�s secular credentials, amid a similar debate in Pakistan as the centre-right and liberal camps lock horns, the Indian newspaper, The Hindu, may have done all of us much good by reporting on what eminent Indian poet Jagan Nath Azad had to say a year prior to his death. According to the late Mr Azad, who was based in Lahore in 1947, he was asked by Mr Jinnah to write the national anthem for the new state of Pakistan. This is how Mr Azad described it: �On the morning of August 9, 1947, there was a message from Pakistan�s first governor-general, Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It was through a friend working in Radio Lahore who called me to his office. He told me �Quaid-e-Azam wants you to write a national anthem for Pakistan.� I told them it would be difficult to pen it in five days and my friend pleaded that as the request had come from the tallest leader of Pakistan, I should consider his request. On much persistence, I agreed.� (more…)

Of Bombay Dreams

// June 3rd, 2005 // 3 Comments » // All, Articles

Gone was Hameed, the carefree friend who was always clowning, the googly bowler, Shakespeare�s Shylock, unknown resident of Bombay�s crowded city. He was dead and buried somewhere in that city in a nameless grave, and we who loved him had come to know of it months later, through a postcard.

http://www.thefridaytimes.com/page19.shtml

Of warriors and fighting spirits

// May 21st, 2005 // No Comments » // All, Articles, people

I always enjoy Khaled Hasans’ columns in the Friday Times.
He’s lived a life that only someone immersed in the meandering, chaotic political milieu of Pakistan can. From reading one of his translations (A wet afternoon, Saadat Hassan Manto) and sporadic readings of the column, I gather he was with the Pakistan Times (A left-leaning newspaper in the 60′s that was famously edited by Faiz Ahmed Faiz) and a press secretary of Bhutto during that short lived idealistic dawn of a Pakistani political identity.
I digress, getting back to this weeks column. ‘The last warrior’ is an epitaph to Ahmed Bashir, another from that fast disappearing breed of men, those with true personalities and the soul to bravely fight the haemorrhaging corruption and decrepitude of a dream that turned all too quickly into a nightmare.
Khalids’ translation of an Ahmed Bashir article reads:

I have seen Ayub looting the country. And then Zia-ul-Haq; and Benazir; and Nawaz Sharif. As for myself, I have never auctioned my politics, or my conscience or my integrity. Today I am a tired old man of eighty who is sick, stricken by a plethora of painful diseases. I now lie here waiting for the awesome blast of that trumpet that will make birds fly out of trees. I have no property, no money, no regrets but my soul is at peace because I know I have never done anything bad knowingly

And as Kaifi Azmi (who as card-carrying member of the congress party was put in a not entirely different situation soon after independence) wrote for Kaghaz ke Phool (Guru Dutt)

Waqt ne kiya kiya haseen sitam

Jaayenge kaha sujhta nahi
chal pade magar raasta nahi
Kya talaash hai kuchh pata nahi
Bun rahe hain dil khaab dam-ba-dam
..

Read “Ahmed Bahir, The last warrior” [TFT - Sub required]

The Art of Qawwali: An article

// May 2nd, 2005 // No Comments » // Articles, Qawwali

He whirls slowly but unsteadily at first-like a pirouetting dervish intoxicated with the very rhythm that moves him-in concert with the rising and falling intonations. At once harmonious and cacophonous, the overpowering music builds, as the man moves faster, while the credence seemingly accommodates, impossibly in sync.

The heady mixture of music and sanctity is mesmerising. And as the rhythms reach their crescendo, the rapidly twirling blur now collapses to a heap on the floor, fulfilled in a haze of man, music and mysticism.

From Bhajans to gospel choirs, that music moves the spirit is a notion steeped in the very foundations of the human consciousness.

Though fictionalised, these are events that have unfolded where a soulful, gritty and undiluted ancient mystical musical art is practised-anywhere where Qawwali is still sung from the heart.

With its distinctive chorus, Qawwali is instantly recognizable. But its much less commonly explored. If not an enigma, then the qawwali is still a flavour on the fringes of the mainstream interest.

Here in Pakistan, the last bastion of the authentic Qawwali, we still have much to appreciate and celebrate in an art simultaneously at its evolutionary zenith and its twilight. (more…)

A genius explains

// February 20th, 2005 // 1 Comment » // Articles

Saturday February 12, 2005
The Guardian
Interview by Richard Johnson

Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism.

Daniel Tammet is talking. As he talks, he studies my shirt and counts the stitches. Ever since the age of three, when he suffered an epileptic fit, Tammet has been obsessed with counting. Now he is 26, and a mathematical genius who can figure out cube roots quicker than a calculator and recall pi to 22,514 decimal places. He also happens to be autistic, which is why he can’t drive a car, wire a plug, or tell right from left. He lives with extraordinary ability and disability.

Tammet is calculating 377 multiplied by 795. Actually, he isn’t “calculating”: there is nothing conscious about what he is doing. He arrives at the answer instantly. Since his epileptic fit, he has been able to see numbers as shapes, colours and textures. The number two, for instance, is a motion, and five is a clap of thunder. “When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That’s the answer. It’s mental imagery. It’s like maths without having to think.” (more…)

Eqbal Ahmad: Post – Pokhran Days

// February 20th, 2005 // 1 Comment » // Articles

Eqbal Ahmad: Post – Pokhran Days
Pervez Hoodbhoy

The more things change, they more they stay the same. Its funny how universal some axioms can be. The mountain turning white in chagai is a almost a distant memory, but for those harangues repeated ad-nauseum of how we stand ready to guard our kahutas and our kamras.

But somehow it seems our issues never really change, what Imran wrote of, what Hoodboy writes below are problems that still plague us. To me this is a far from stale essay, but rather, with the benefit of hindsight, a inspiringly erudite discussion..

Now was the time of the Kalams and Khans, the Chidambarams and Mubarikmands.

He fought for Kashmiri self-determination in 1948, against French imperialism in Algeria in the early 60′s, roused students on American campuses in the early 70′s against their government’s immoral war in Vietnam, dodged arrest by the CIA in a case trumped up by Richard Nixon’s government that accused him of trying to kidnap Henry Kissinger, passionately campaigned against the ethnic cleansing of East Pakistan by the West Pakistani army, and was the trusted
lieutenant of the Palestinian leadership. With the passage of years, and his eventual return to Pakistan, his efforts gradually focussed upon healing the wounds of Partition, and diffusing the poison of intolerance and militarism of the post-Zia era. Challenge and adversity left him undaunted – until that fateful day of 11 May 1998, when the ground trembled uncontrollably at Pokharan and the subcontinent was to change forever. Exactly one year later – on 11 May 1999 – Eqbal Ahmad died in an Islamabad hospital. He was 67. (more…)

Imran khan & selective Islam

// February 7th, 2005 // 3 Comments » // Articles

In Pakistan We Have Selective Islam
By Imran Khan

My Generation grew up at a time when colonial hang up was at its peak. Our older generation had been slaves and had a huge inferiority complex of the British. The school I went to was a similar to all elite schools in Pakistan, despite becoming independent, they were, and still are, producing replicas of public school boys rather than Pakistanis. I read Shakespeare which was fine, but no Allama Iqbal. The Islamic class was not considered to be serious, and when I left the school I was considered amongst the elite of the country because I could speak English and wore western clothes. Despite periodically shouting Pakistan Zindabad at school functions, I considered my own culture backward and Islam an outdated religion. Amongst our group if anyone talked about religion, prayed or kept a beard he was immediately branded a Mullah. Because of the power of the Western Media, all our heroes were western movie or pop stars. When I went to Oxford already burdened with this hang up from my school days, things didn’t get any easier. In University not just Islam but all religions were considered anachronism. Science had replaced religion and if something couldn’t be logically proved it did not exist. All supernatural stuff was confined to the movies. Philosophers like Darwin who with his half baked theory of evolution was supposed to have disproved the creation of man and hence religion. Moreover, the European history had an awful experience with religion. The horrors committed by the Christian clergy in the name of God during the Inquisition had left a powerful impact on the western mind. To understand why the West is so keen on secularism, one should go to places like Cordoba in Spain and see torture apparatus used during Spanish Inquisition. Also the persecution of scientists as heretics by the clergy and convinced the Europeans that all religions are regressive. (more…)

Blood on the street

// February 2nd, 2005 // No Comments » // Articles

Jan. 17 issue – Jack Grubman, the king of Wall Street’s telecom analysts, didn’t always hate AT&T. He had worked for the company once, as did his wife. And as an analyst, he often had been positive on the stock through the 1980s and into the mid 1990s. But Grubman’s research turned considerably more negative on AT&T after federal legislation in 1996 gave a big boost to new rivals like WorldCom and Global Crossing. They emerged as Grubman’s favorite stocks, and his relentless championing of those companies put his firm, Salomon Smith Barney, and its parent, Citigroup, first in line to underwrite billions in stocks and bonds to raise money that the telecoms needed to build their massive networks. Grubman knew how to work the system�earning an average of $20 million a year. Grubman grew even more bearish on AT&T when C. Michael Armstrong was named CEO in 1997. Outgoing and smooth, Armstrong had been a top salesman for IBM, and later CEO of Hughes Electronics. He vowed to shake things up at AT&T, by slashing expenses and making acquisitions. Grubman didn’t buy the strategy, though, and he soon put a “hold” on the stock�a no-confidence vote for Armstrong. Inside the telecom industry, people knew Grubman’s opinion wasn’t just about business. Grubman despised Armstrong. At conferences and in chats with his top clients, Grubman bashed the AT&T CEO as an “empty suit,” a “delusionist,” or a “f—— fraud.” (more…)